When running Homeworld Cataclysm on Windows 7 the main issue is usually not with the OS but with newer video cards. Users with unsupported video cards may experience the following error right after the intro cinematics:

"Cataclysm.exe has stopped working"

To get around this follow the steps below. Advance warning: some users have reported that the game still crashes after following these steps on non-US versions of the game (e.g. UK). If you find that this is the case, please contact me or hunt down an US version of the game and use that instead.

Install theHomeworld Cataclysm 1.01 patch (most important part). Make sure you install the patch specific to the region where you bought the game. Keep in mind after patching you will not be able to load saves made before the patch! See the Homeworld Cataclysm 1.01 patch installation crash post if you have any trouble installing the patch.Download link 1 <– Assam Kiiith’sid Storehouse (All regions)Download link 2 <– Shacknews (US version)Download link 3 <– Softpedia (US version)

(Optional) Install the latest video card drivers. In most cases this won’t be necessary, but it’s always good to have the latest stable release of your video card drivers. See your video card manufacturer’s website (e.g. nvidia) for more info on how to download the drivers.

(Optional) Run as administrator and with Windows NT compatibility. While still in the shortcut properties select the compatibility tab and run the program under Windows NT compatibility and select Run this program as administrator.Note – Setting the game to run in compatibility mode, works for many, but some users on Windows Vista have reported that this step actually prevents the game from running, so be sure to try both with and without these settings.

If you’ve followed the above steps and you’re still experiencing crashes there are a few more things you can try:

Disable intro cinematics. Sometimes the intro cinematics themselves can cause your startup crashes. To disable them, right click on the Homeworld Cataclysm shortcut on your desktop and select properties. In the target field add a space and then the following command line option:/disableAVI
e.g. C:\Program Files\Sierra\Cataclysm\cataclysm.exe /disableAVI

Enable safeGL. Right click on the Homeworld Cataclysm shortcut and select properties. In the target field add a space and then the following command line option:/safeGL
You can add multiple command line options to the target field by seperating them with a space e.g. C:\Program Files\Sierra\Cataclysm\cataclysm.exe /disableAVI /safeGL

Change your rGL device. In the same way you add the /safeGL option above you can set which device is used for rGL./device <dev>
In place of <dev> enter try each of the following (one at a time) of : sw, fx or d3d

Reset your rendering system to default. It is possible that your issue was caused by changing your rendering system configurations. If you’ve tried everything else above without success add the /sw command line option the same way you added the /safeGL option to reset your rendering system to default./sw

If you’ve followed the above steps and are still having issues running Homeworld Cataclysm on Windows 7, please post in the comments below. To increase your chances of a solution being found include as much detail as possible (which version of the game you’re running, what operating system you have, what video card you have and steps to reproduce the issue). Screenshots are also very useful!

I’m sorry the above steps didn’t work for you. In some cases the video alone is what causes the crash even after you patch the game. If you’ve got both the 1.01 patch installed and the latest video drivers, try setting the game to run in NT compatibility mode and to run as administrator.

If that doesn’t work it would really helpful if you could post where you installed the game from, your current operating system and your video card.

Me again. Homeworld works just fine, barring the fact that it’s still 10x harder than Cataclysm. Tried running in compatability for 98, 95, XP Pack 3, and NT pack 5. Some with patch, some without. Will try NT with patch, supposedly that works better.

Hi john, I’m glad it worked! In all honesty, thanks for walking through the process. It’s always helpful to get confirmation whether it’s that some thing works as expected or that it breaks as expected.

I do have a different question now, because I have a different problem. When playing, my computer seems to have some trouble with the rendering, because the game runs slow whenever I move the camera. The only time it doesn’t is when I’m rotating ships in the build view. I used the /safeGL option, which helped, but most of the time it still slows down when I rotate the camera.

To put it in perspective, I have no such trouble with standard Homeworld, and my laptop runs Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim at full graphics, with some HD mods, with no ill effects. I have more than 5GB of ram available at any given time.

Okay, managed to identify the problem a little more clearly, and maybe it won’t happen in Single Player (i’ve only been testing in Training Mode).

My renderer slows down when the narrator is speaking, and only then. Not sure why that would be a problem; maybe not enough memory allocated?

Using the following options:
/safeGL
/sw
/enableSSE
/enable3DNow
/noglddraw

Not sure if all are helping, but it’s gotten me this far. The game is -playabe- with existing options, but it’s very annoying, and I don’t want to have to turn speech volume off or something in order to play.

Mark P

December 24, 2013 at 7:36 am

Unfortunately I’ve still had no luck whatsoever with this game -patched or unpatched – despite the above! The .exe refuses to initiate – I get an hourglass cursor for a few seconds, then nothing at all. I’ve also tried installing the game without the voice/music/videos, to see if that reduced any other conflicts, but that changes nothing.

I marked it as optional because it seems to have varying results but for most machines setting the game to run as administrator and with Windows NT compatibility is often what you’ll need to finally get the game running (granted the 1.1 patch has been installed already). Have you tried that?

I have a very similar laptop (C650) but with integrated graphics and the above steps worked on there. Thanks for posting all the details.

Thanks for reply! I’ve tried running it in admin mode with every compatibility setting, with and without patch, but nothing makes a difference.

Since it does it on 3 machines (one of which is an old Win98 machine), then I’m now thinking it must be some kind of fundamental conflict with the disc itself? I can’t think of any good reason why it wouldn’t run fine on that old machine. The disc was originally bought in the UK (and I’m installing the UK patch) but all the computers I am trying to run it on are North American built, so perhaps it’s a stupid licencing/copy-protection conflict between the Euro CD and American disc drives. Also it seems to be a different problem to most people: most of the stories about HWCat not working seem to talk about the intro videos playing and then an error message coming up, but I don’t even get that. Perhaps I’ll try to hunt down a North American CD or something

I doubt there is a conflict between the machine and distribution version. Still though it’s a likely starting point as I think most people that land on this page have the American version (or some pirated variant).

For consistency please do go ahead and try to find an NA CD or ISO and try again if possible. Another suggestion I might have would be to attempt to install the US patch over your UK installation anyway. Perhaps it will let you.

If you’re using a NO-CD exe, please note that most of them are region specific, and replace your game executable, so using the wrong one will break your install.

Thanks for taking the time to try it out and let me know! I’ll add a warning that the UK version may not be properly patchable. I’m sure there will be others out there that will be grateful for your help :)

Every time I rotate the camera the game freezes for about a second. It seems that the lower the resolution, the shorter the freeze time is, but the game is nearly unplayable on minimum resolution thanks to all the aliasing. I have /safeGL and /sw active.

Some suggestions. First does the game work without those options enabled? If so check if removing them still leaves you with the same issue. If that doesn’t work you’ll want to look into some of the other Homeworld Cataclysm custom options.

Yadda yadda bla bla, ill skip the part of detailing of who knows how many combinations of settings and command lines Ive tried to get this to work. Propably all of that have already been said above. Barely can wrap my head around them anyway…

However, Im curious if this observation im about to say can help in solving my crashings.

Occasionally and randomly, the game plays out for less than 30 seconds before crashing. In the tutorial lessons, my command ship is invisible or not rendered. Only the blinking lights of its model are visible and the name popping up on hovering it shows that its still there.

Anyways, shortly afterwards the what little graphics there are start to tear with triangles and what have you followed by “Cataclysm has crashed” message upon being booted out.

So my Cataclysm cant render ships and propably crashes because of it. Great, but I dont know what that tells me to fix it.

Excuse my more mundane, winding description of the problem, tired of trying settings and commands that I barely understand how they work or what they do. Did what I typed above help anyone to identify whats the source of my problem_

After installing the game in July 2014, and it not working, I left it alone. Now, I’m trying to figure out how to get this thing working, but I’m having no luck. Here is what I did so far (from the above list):

Do you happen to have any other machines to test on? I’m not sure if there’s a relation but ATI recently released a driver update that broke Homeworld 2 for some people. If there’s any carryover in the game engine for Homeworld Cataclysm it’s possible your issue may have the same cause. See the bottom of the comments section of this post for more details: http://www.thegameengine.org/homeworld-2/homeworld-2-on-windows-7/#comment-2334

The article you mentioned is referencing drivers 14.9. I’m using 13.9, as those are the drivers that AMD recommended for the 4850.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Catacylsm, this time as an administrator install (plus the patch afterwards, of course), and still nothing. After clicking on the desktop shortcut for the game (I even tried running from the .exe file in the game folder, just in case), the W7 blue hollow wheel spins for about 5 seconds, obviously trying to do something, but then it just stops and nothing happens.

Trying to get this working in a Windows 8 laptop, none of the steps you listed worked. Tried all kinds of arcane command line options listed elsewhere. Didn’t work. Finally, as a last ditch measure, tried to run it under Win XP SP 2 compatability mode instead of NT….and it worked! The menu came up!

Pushing my luck, I tried to run it at a higher than default resolution. That caused it to crash again. Oh well, I’ll just run it at the default resolution. I remove /1600 from the command line…

the game still doesn’t work. On the exact same settings under which it was successfully running before, it now crashes before the menu ever loads again. This is true of all compatability modes.